A web browser is a software application used to locate and display web pages. To locate a web page with a browser, a user must know the web address of the web page, referred to as a uniform resource locator (URL). However, URLs are often not representative of the associated content. In some cases, the URLs may be exceptionally long or simply non-descriptive, and hence the entry of the URL in the entry field of a browser can be a difficult task for many users. If a user does not know the URL of the web page or just wants to find information on a particular topic, a user typically needs to use a search engine. When a user wants to locate information on a particular topic, he or she inputs keywords in a search interface of a search engine.
Bookmarks, normally called “My Favorites” in Internet Explorer, are a convenient design available in most popular web browsers to store URLs (or called links) of web pages that a user has visited and chosen to save, and thus a user can access a favorite web page via a bookmark to the web page with no need to remember the URLs, hereinafter referred to as a browser-based bookmark system. Despite its usefulness, the current arrangement of bookmarks is not without its drawbacks. For example, adding bookmarks to a bookmark file or a particular bookmark folder in the browser is manually intensive. As the number of bookmarks in the browser increases dramatically, updating bookmarks, i.e. removing the old address and entering the new one, is very slow and inefficient.
Social networks provide another method for users to more quickly locate websites of interest. One example is social bookmark websites, e.g. del.icio.us, dogear and furl etc. as illustrated in FIG. 1, which allow users to tag URLs and share tagged URLs with other users. The users will save bookmarks or tags associated with a web page of interest at the bookmark website. Tagging is a process by which users assign labels in the form of keywords to web contents with a purpose to share, discover and recover them. Users may “tag” a web page of interest by associating a term or label with the web page allowing the categorization of different web pages based on the tag. Furthermore, users may search other users' bookmarks based on a particular topic they are interested in to quickly locate relevant web pages. Accordingly, the social bookmark sites are also called “Tag-based online bookmark systems”.
Compared with traditional bookmark systems, the tagged-based online bookmark systems provide users the benefit of accessing their bookmark anywhere on any platform. Additionally, these tagged-based online bookmark systems let users collaboratively associate any keywords to a web page of interest which is chosen by users to store keywords associated with the web page for annotating and categorizing content, which also called “folksonomy” in Web 2.0 terminology. The tagged-based online bookmark systems have advantage over existing browser-based bookmark systems in that they are not required to store the bookmarks in tree-style category, and users can organize their bookmark by its semantics.
FIG. 1A shows three interfaces of conventional tag-based online bookmark systems, respectively as DEL.ICIO.US, DOGEAR and FURL. These systems either re-direct the web page of interest to an associated bookmark system, or pop up a new window asking for a user's input. The windows 102, 104 represent the web pages which a user is interested in. When a user desires to bookmark the web page, an add-on button associated with a bookmark website server on the bookmarks toolbar of a browser will be clicked, e.g., “Furl It” button 106 as shown in FIG. 1A. The add-on button may be embodied as a plug-in for a browser, namely as a bookmark plug-in. Then, the browser pops up a new window, such as the window 108 related to the FURL bookmark website, for entry by the user. As illustrated, shown in the window 108 of FURL, there is a field 110 for the user to input preferred topics and a field 112 for the user to input comments, clippings and keywords. The topics used in FURL are similar to the tagging feature of other social bookmark websites, while the comments used in FURL are similar to the notes used in DEL.ICIO.US bookmark website. Additionally, comments, clippings and keywords may be given greater weight while searching.
On the other hand, if there is a built-in link to a bookmark website shown in web pages of interest, the user can click the built-in link to the bookmark website, and then re-direct to the bookmark website server so as to enter a default web page of the bookmark website for the user's input, as the window 100 of DEL.ICIO.US shown in FIG. 1A.
FIG. 1B is a work flow diagram of using a conventional FURL online bookmark system. In step 152, a user first locates and displays a web page of interest. In step 154, the user determines whether to bookmark the web page. Upon determining to bookmark the web page, the user clicks an add-on button associated with a bookmark website server on the bookmarks toolbar of a browser, such as the above-mentioned “Furl It” button 106. The browser thus retrieves the URL of the current web page and sends it to FURL server (step 156). In step 158, the browser pops up a new window to display a FRUL bookmark dialogue box (e.g. the window 108) bearing suggested keywords to the user for input. The suggested keywords are generated at the server side and then returned to the user side after the user determines to bookmark the web page. The user may input tags and/or notes (step 160). In step 162, the browser sends the tags and/or notes to FURL and closes the dialogue box, and then the process proceeds to the step 152.
However, these conventional tag-based bookmark systems mentioned above cannot suggest accurate keywords to the user. They either only provide a hint of what other tags had been associated with this page, or just highlight what is the user's hottest tag so far. They don't perform context analysis on the target web page so that the suggestions might not always make sense. Another problem of these systems is that they all take considerable time to finish the bookmarking process. As above-mentioned, they either re-direct the web page of interest to an associated bookmark system (as shown in the window 100 of DEL.ICIO.US shown in FIG. 1A), or pop up a new window asking for a user's input (as shown in the window 108 of FURL shown in FIG. 1A). Since these systems all start generating suggestions only after a user decides to bookmark the web page, and then return the suggestions to the user, it is inevitably that the user suffer from the server processing delay and network latency. Furthermore, current available solutions don't also provide a user-friendly interface to highlight tags. For example, all suggested keywords (or tags) look the same, namely same color and same size.